The invention relates to a fluid valve apparatus, particularly for controlling pneumatic components in marine and industrial applications.
Fluid control valves have been known for many years, and most manufacturers suPPly a wide range of valves, such as three-way, normally-open or normally-closed valves, or four-way, normally-open or normally-closed valves, which can be solenoid-actuated, manually-actuated or pilot pressure-actuated etc. Specific applications sometimes require a complex combination of ports and valve configurations, which sometimes require changing after installation for specific applications. In view of the large number of combinations of valves required, manufacturers and suppliers are required to maintain large inventories of different valve types, plus large numbers of spare parts for the many types of valves. Large inventories are costly to supPly and control, and servicing charges for pneumatic installations can be high in view of the complexity of stocking the valves, the skill required in selecting the right valve for a particular application, and the time consuming repair or replacement of relatively low cost components in such valves.
In some applications, field repairs or substitutions, it is desirable to interchange a valve normally-closed valve, or vice versa, and this usually requires a complete replacement of the existing valve with a substitute valve. To the inventor's knowledge, it is not possible to change an existing valve from a normally-open configuration to a normally-closed configuration without complete replacement of the valve, or at least replacement of many of the major components of the valve.
Furthermore, while it is known to stack valves together on a common manifold to receive pressurized fluid from a common supply, such manifolds are normally custom made for the particular application. The manifolds usually consist of a U-sectioned channel, provided with a cover plate with fastening means to connect the valve thereto. In such an arrangement, unless the manifold has a reserve connection capacity to permit connection of additional valves thereto, if additional valves are required in an application a completely new manifold member is required. Thus, it is common to carry a wide variety of manifold members for supplying air to such valves also. To the inventor's knowledge, there are no manifold members which permit stacking of manifold members together to increase the capacity of an existing manifold to supply fluid to additional valves.